


Before, After, Always

by utlaginn



Series: Amorevole [6]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: (between the characters not between you and I you know what you're here for), Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Apologies, Attempted Seduction, Barebacking, Drinking, Drunk Sex, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Time Topping, Fluff and Smut, Hair-pulling, Heavy Petting, Impatience, Introspection, Kissing, Light Angst, M/M, Oral Sex, POV switch, Rimming, Shower Sex, Switching, Tender Sex, celebration sex and positive affirmations, that's it that's the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-09 02:03:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8871409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/utlaginn/pseuds/utlaginn
Summary: The night before the free skate, nothing happens. The night after? Everything does.





	1. Before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so. I was trying to work out my Ep. 10 feelings with this fic and then Ep. 11 happened and my heart is shattered (in the best way) and my plan for the fic kinda changed… So this conversation turned into a little bit of a “fix it.” I tried to keep it as in-line with the canon of the episode as I could.
> 
> Image Music: Scriabin, Op. 61: [Poème-Nocturne](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T18u8UiZ4o4).

Yuuri stands on the ice, in the posture Victor choreographed for him. Toe of his skate dug in hard to hold him still. Arms around himself. Breath escaping him in deep shudders. He feels the heat in his face, feels it’s not all exhaustion. He doesn’t know exactly what it is until the performance drains from his veins, until the scraps of eros he’d managed to pull together tonight seep from him like blood from a wound. Until the replay starts in his mind and then he knows-

Past the exhaustion?

All devastation.

As he drops down to his knees, he thinks:

‘ _He wrote this for_ us _, and I couldn’t make it perfect_.’

Not for himself, not even for Victor. Victor who had written a routine about a whirlwind of a night, about a boy who set the room on fire. A boy he’d been waiting for, been waiting to become that firebrand again. Who wasn’t what he thought, isn’t what he thinks, now.

Victor’s arm around him at the kiss and cry is just enough to keep him grounded. Just enough.  
  
***  
  
Three nights entwine in Yuuri’s mind as they leave the arena, as he watches the laces of his shoes flutter over the concrete.

One: this night. The last night he will skate that routine for Victor, the last night of Victor’s hold on that world record.

Two: last night. The night that sounds like a hallelujah choir, feels like a comforting weight, like the warm metal around his finger.

Three: the night he doesn’t remember. Didn’t remember? Whatever—the night the Eros dance is about. His entire routine is irrevocably etched in his brain, of course, but there are parts of it that his whole being seems made of when he performs the movements. In these, on the ice tonight, he had thought he felt something more than muscle memory. A siren song of synapses trying to connect.

Victor had written the Eros routine before he’d even met Yuuri again, had incorporated their dance-off last December, down to the gestures, even. Yuuri had been told. The pictures are, unfortunately, burned in his retinas.

But now he can _feel_ in his limbs. What they’ve all been taunting him about is true.

Maybe it hadn’t been all exhaustion, devastation, that had forced his forehead to the ice, sent him curling around himself.

When he made himself stand up and skate to the wall, Yuuri hadn’t wanted to meet Victor’s eyes. Perhaps for the first time. But he made himself do that, too. There had been disappointment in that icy surface, of course there had. But not the kind he’d lecture Yuuri over, not at all like forcing him to realize that being cold to younger skaters like Minami is inherently disappointing behavior, especially from someone like himself, who has always needed so much encouragement.

“Yuuri, are you alright?”

He jerks his head up. “Hm? Oh.”

They’re in their hotel room already. Stopping to check in, Yuuri takes account of what he’s doing. He’s taking off his jacket, tossing it in the direction of his suitcase. Realizing that he barely even remembers the elevator ride, let alone the walk here from the rink. He’s not usually over-talkative after his SP, even for the interview cameras. (Which he knows is bad; he’s working on it.) He draws inward—which is, of course, not always the most productive thing—but he can tell this is worse than usual.

There’s a reason, obviously, but still. Victor doesn’t deserve the brunt of it.

“Yeah, I’m okay.” He tries to offer Victor a reassuring smile. “Just thinking.”

“You sounded pretty steady in your interview, but since then you’ve been so quiet… and you said you wanted to talk. Do you want to tell me what’s on your mind?”

It’s a question—not a command. Victor probably thinks he’s spooked and is treading gently. Which Yuuri loves him all the more for. But that’s not what this is. He is afraid, for tomorrow, of course he is, but somehow that fear is dwarfed but what else he’s afraid of, in this moment, alone with Victor.

“I’m thinking…” He looks down, trying to collect a few adequate words.

Victor bursts out, “If it’s about landing the quad flip tomorrow, or even changing it up again, we shouldn’t distract you with more information now. But if you want a different way to think about it, you know, I was talking to Yakov—he was really impressed with you in China, don’t let him make you think otherwise—but he noticed that you tend to…”

Victor talks with his hands, more than almost anyone Yuuri has ever met. And his earnestness is sweet. The second he escapes the confines of that navy blue, custom-tailored jacket, he’s turning to Yuuri and gesturing widely, his arm raised flat to become the ice, his other hand shifting to discuss weight distribution.

“And when you compensate like that…”

He’s so attractive too, in his vest and shirtsleeves. That thin black tie. The heat rises in Yuuri unexpected—but he’s glad for it. He examines Victor’s lithe frame. Thinks, who does he even think he is, wearing a three piece suit like it’s 1919 and he’s managing a gang and not a Japanese skater?

Victor is caught off guard, when Yuuri grabs him by that tie and brings him down to his eye-level.

“Before we talk, I want to do something else.”

“Oh?” Victor, who is very good at switching gears, must hear the breath enter Yuuri’s tone. He smiles.

“Something I utterly failed to do today. I want to do something for the most patient man in Russia.” Yuuri doesn’t let Victor respond—and Victor looks a little too taken aback to answer, anyway. As Yuuri speaks, he walks them back, slowly, deliberately. “Not just Russia, in the entire world. The entire _universe_.”

Maintaining eye contact, Yuuri maneuvers them until Victor’s back is against the wall. Then he keeps going, lifting upward onto the balls of his feet so he can lay his hands flat against Victor’s chest and kiss him, thoroughly, forcing him backward still. (In hindsight, he’s grateful he remembered the entire far wall is made up of window; it would have been dangerous to do this against the glass, and more than that, he doesn’t really want to know what he looks like right now, still in his—Victor’s—outfit, dried sweat and desolation all over him, heavy on his skin, hair coming down out of its hold with the weight of it.)

Yuuri controls the kiss, uses his weight to leverage against Victor, makes sure he can’t do anything about the angle. Yuuri doesn’t want to be led, not right now. He wants to show Victor how desperate he is. Has always been, really. To make up for tonight, to make up for… not showing him, so many times.

“A year ago you had some drunk idiot plaster himself to you and practically beg you to come live with him.” He trails one hand down between the tight press of their bodies, allowing Victor to anticipate exactly what he’s going to do. “Then when you made good on that deal, he just wanted to what, keep it _professional_?”

Victor gasps, that surprised little inhale that Yuuri loves, when he cups his palm against the front of his trousers.

“Yuuri…”

“What could you have thought of me all that time?” That question hits too close to honesty, and the younger skater feels his throat close up a little around it—so he dives forward again, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to the side of Victor’s neck. “I’m gonna show you just what I was thinking. Even if I couldn’t- even if tonight- and even if I was too shy to show you at first. God, you were so patient with me…”

“Yuuri.”

Yuuri rocks back a little at the desperate tone, expecting to be pulled up into another kiss. What he doesn’t expect is for Victor’s eyes to be closed, his eyebrows drawn together as if he’s _holding himself back_.

“It’s really not fair for you to do this, in that outfit, while I can’t do anything about it.”

Yuuri’s face falls. “But I want you to do something about it.”

‘ _Crap_ ,’ he thinks. ‘ _Victor is so good at initiating, he does it so smoothly, am I coming on too_ -’

But Victor cuts off that train of thought with the long slide of his hand into Yuuri’s hair—one that ends in a sharp tug that forces his head backward and exposes his neck.

“Well I _want_ to do this, and harder, and so much more. I want to throw you back on that bed and do things to you that will make you scream. I want to put the seducer in his place, every time you finish that damn program.” Victor says.

“Even tonight?”

“Even tonight,” Victor repeats, his hand tightening marginally as his lips trail over Yuuri’s jugular. “But.”

His grip loosens, slowly. Yuuri feels that his eyes are wide as he looks up at him.

“But what?”

With a softer smile, Victor answer, “But. Stop for a second, Yuuri. You’re not in the right headspace, I know you’re not. And remember—you weren’t as mortified as you were by those pictures of us in China because you cared that much about people thinking that we were sleeping together. It was about people thinking of _when_ we were sleeping together.”

“…Oh.”

“Yes, ‘ _oh_.’ You’re a little too worked up for me to be expected to control myself, and I think it’s a bad idea to try.”

That exact thought had occurred to him at the Cup of China, of course. And he feels the blood start to drain from his face as he considers that he’d been trying to bait Victor so hard into doing something that could affect tomorrow’s outcome.

Something they’d both feel guilty about.

“Sorry, it’s still kind of new, I never had to think about it realistically before.” He blushes as he starts to draw out of Victor’s personal space, putting his hand over the back of his neck and feeling the heat there. “I guess the common wisdom is that we shouldn’t, huh?”

Victor misinterprets the imploring gaze he adopts as he goes to apologize. “The puppy dog eyes aren’t going to work on me today like they did yesterday, Yuuri.” Turning his head, he mutters in Russian. And Yuuri doesn’t understand more than a third of the words, but one of them is definitely dirty, and the tone of it sounds an awful lot like, “ _I can’t believe_ I _have to be the one of the two of us that isn’t thinking with his dick_.”

Yuuri sighs. “You’re right. Sorry, again.”

He pulls back—noting, as he does, that despite his words, Victor is… excited.

“Believe me, I’m sorry, too. You as Eros, me in my suit. What was I thinking; we should have had a chaperone.”

Victor is grinning, wolflike, and Yuuri ducks his head to hide his smile. “Maybe Chris would have volunteered.”

“No, I think Chris would definitely have encouraged us. He’s your competition. And also an enabler.”

Yuuri tilts his head, smile growing absent, unfamiliar with the word.

“The way Phichit is your cheerleader?” Yuuri gives another short laugh, but nods. “Every bad decision I’ve ever made in public has been Chris’s fault. Trust me, he would have made it worse.”

Knowing Victor’s history as he does, he’s not sure that’s one hundred percent true. So he smiles skeptically as he starts toward the bathroom.

“Anyway, I should probably shower. Is it okay if I do that before we talk?”

“Of course. I’ll take one after you.”

Then Yuuri pauses at the door. Rests his hand against the jam and taps his fingers a little as he watches Victor strip out of his vest. “Did you… maybe want to…”

Victor looks up from the bed, where he’s sat to take off his socks. “Want to what?”

Why is none of his nuance getting through the Russian’s thick skull, damn. “To join me?” It’s almost a squeak, and he hates the unsure sound of it, but Victor puts his mind at ease by rising to his bare feet in one smooth motion.

“If you’d like.”  
  
***  
  
He manages to focus on Victor, and not on the anxieties clotting his brain, as Victor helps him wash. In each touch of his fingers, over his limbs, through his hair, Victor covers him in affection the best way he knows how. This touchy-feely thing is still new, but not so bad, not bad at all, when it’s coming from someone whose touch is as expressive as Victor’s is.

Touch had done a lot for them, when words couldn’t do it all. The language barrier was still tough, sometimes, and even when it wasn’t, their ways of communicating was just so different. At the end of the day, he’s not even sure their touch can express it all.

This bond of theirs goes further than either of them can appreciate individually. Yuuri doesn’t remember the first night of what Phichit has been calling their “courtship”; he doesn’t remember the look on the man’s face at the exact moment that, for Victor, had been love at first sight. (Victor’s words; Yuuri thinks he’s exaggerating a little. But the skating god had moved countries on nothing more than a drunken promise and a viral video, so maybe there was something to the whole “love at first sight” concept.). And as for Victor, he probably doesn’t realize the depth of Yuuri’s adoration. Its history. He’d probably seen every single performance of Victor’s—not all of them as they showed on live TV, but certainly a few of them more than once. And all those posters, all that time learning who Victor Nikiforov was as a person. As much as he could as merely a fan… In his youth it had practically been idolatry.

That bond draws them each to the other. Maybe it’s that vacuum at either end that draws Yuuri’s head to loll back on his shoulders, sends his weight sinking against Victor with true relaxation, all bravado gone.  
  
***  
  
Nothing happens in the shower, of course.

They’ve always bathed together while he’s been Yuuri’s coach. Maybe that’s one of the reasons they do this together so often—to the point where they do this instead of sex, when intimacy is needed but time is limited. And it usually has been. Whatever the reason, as Victor helps Yuuri wash the gel out of his hair, he hopes he’s at least managing to give Yuuri familiarity, comfort—enough to overtake his anxieties, if only for the moment.

The problem isn’t that Yuuri is selfish. The problem is that he thinks he is—that he won’t accept what’s given to him, freely, by so many of the people around him. Doesn’t believe it can be free, perhaps. That’s its own kind of self-absorption, of course, but it’s not the sin Yuuri has made it out to be in his own head.

A head that is leaning back against Victor’s chest.

He’s so lean right now, the knot at the top of his spine pressing against Victor’s sternum. But he’s not the kind of person whom practice wears all the way down to the bone. Victor wraps one arm around his chest so he can appreciate it. Even after the months of intense works, he’s built in a way that’s more sylph than stick. And still rounded in the right places. His _thighs_ , god, that’s one of the highlights of his memories of last year’s banquet and now that he has Yuuri for himself, it’s hard not to drag wet fingers over them, hard not to sink his teeth in-

Victor kicks Yuuri out shortly after he’s done with the younger man’s hair, so Victor can wash his own. (And because Yuuri might be teasing him a little, running his hands a little too long over the planes of muscle in his back.)

This isn’t the nicest room Victor has ever stayed in, granted. But the shower, the water pressure, is just decadent enough that he takes his time about it. And so it gives him time to think.

For so much of the day, when he hadn’t been blown away by Yurio’s growth and admiring of Chris’s passion, Victor’s thoughts had consisted of questions: “What else can I give him? What will do, now?”

It was so ironic, that Yuuri would think that Yuuri himself hadn’t given enough.

He’d wondered that very thought aloud—“What should I do for you?”—to Yuuri more than once: before the Japanese Southern Regional Championships, during their fight in China, at the airport. And he knows that isn’t always the right question to ask, especially of someone who has such a history of uncertainty. No doubt, Yuuri has gained so much self-confidence, and it sits so well on his face. Makes him almost sparkle to look at. But underneath is still his inherent shyness, his inhibition. It’s what keeps him sweet, Victor thinks: his drive and his national fame could so easily have turned him cold, unflappable.

So today, Victor hadn’t asked him out loud. Hadn’t asked what Yuuri needed.

But when he stepped out of this shower, he had a feeling he was going to find out.

Yuuri sits on the bed in a comfortable set of sweats. Victor sits down at the window-seat, drying his hair with a towel. They banter about Minako and Celestino. Then, knowing that talking it out will help, Victor cuts to it.

“What did you want to talk to me about?”

And so they talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unreliable Narrator!Yuuri is fun to play with. :)
> 
> The image music is Scriabin again - but this one’s hard y’all. A little discordant, a little unresolved. This is kind of how I felt the whole time watching Ep 11, and like the episode, you have to work through the music a little to appreciate it…
> 
> BTW, it’s not totally clear to me whether they change at the venue or not, for the Grand Prix events; at the end of Ep. 10 it looked like they were all heading into the arena in their outfits, but it might have been them going into a staging area. For the purposes of this fic I’m assuming Yuuri changed at the hotel. Because I needed him in this outfit. 
> 
> Next chapter bumps the rating up to E.


	2. After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So while I wrote this I was flat-out assuming Yuuri was going to win the Grand Prix Final and that it would result in raucous victory sex. I still think silver is worth said raucous sex so. Minor tweaks, but this is how it goes. 
> 
> Image Music: Prokofiev, Violin Sonata: [No. 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRiO-GMA138).

So the night before what was supposed to be the last competitive skate of Yuuri’s career, nothing happens. They wait. For decisions, for understanding. For love.

The night after Yuuri wins silver at the Grand Prix Final?

Everything happens.

And they wait for nothing.

***

It’s 10:42pm on Saturday. The Victory Ceremony and interviews have taken an eternity (and, alright, sitting on the floor planning their future and crying at each other long after staff started cleaning up the rink—that delay was perhaps on them, a little). So they only have about fifteen minutes to change and meet the other skaters in the lobby of the hotel for celebratory carousing.

Their absence, in particular, would be Very Suspicious.

They all but run across the plaza to the hotel. Yuuri's hand is in his the whole time. Gripping so tight, by the time they make it through the glass doors and to the bank of elevators, it's trembling. They’re so late that only a lone reporter stalks the halls, a straggler waiting for other stragglers. Costing them about two minutes in congratulations and “exclusive” comments. Victor excuses them as gently as he can, Yuuri quiet beside him, knowing Victor is better at this than he is but squeezing his hand with impatience all the same; they wave goodbye to the woman while the elevator doors slide shut, sealing them inside a small space that feels entirely too close and entirely too still.

Victor can see in the mirrored wall that his composure is crumbling. Wasn’t aware he was doing it, but can see now that he’s jiggling his heel against the floor, agitated. Barely enduring the slow ascent, he tracks Yuuri in his peripheral vision. Those soft brown eyes are on his, staring at him— _staring_ , or studying him, maybe, with an open-mouthed expression of marginal disbelief—and the younger man takes a telltale inhale that means he’s going to ask an important question. Victor knows him well enough to acknowledge the warning. And maybe Yuuri doesn’t know he does it, but it is a warning, to him and to his listener: sometimes that he is about to say something difficult, sometimes that he’s about to say something stupid. Sometimes both.

But Victor can’t turn, can’t look him full in the face; he does that now, and he’ll jump him right here in this elevator car, stupid questions or not. He crosses his arms, creating needed distance.

“You’re really coming back?”

Victor glances at Yuuri out of the corner of his eyes. He smirks as he drags his gaze away. “And you’re really staying.” Then he shakes his head. “I can’t believe you told me to go on without you.”

Yuuri must know this teasing tone by now—seems to, anyway, because he only deflates a little. But he still says, “I’m sorry.”

Victor raises his eyebrows, with an offhanded shrug. “You will be.”

Blushing will have been Yuuri’s reaction, Victor is sure, though he isn’t looking at him to see it. But the electric shock that goes through the brunet jolts so strong that Victor swears he can feel it through the inches of empty space between them.  
  
***  
  
They probably don’t need foreplay, excited as they are, but Victor welcomes it when the door to their room opens, closes, and meets his back faster than he can follow. Yuuri slides one knee between his legs, the flesh of his upper thigh grinding against Victor’s half-hardness through slacks and underwear. Slender fingers dart to the fastenings of his clothes, and Victor sighs out what probably sounds like relief but is in fact impatience.

“So you _were_ thinking something dirty in the rink after the ceremony,” Victor says, smiling devilishly, hiding the expression in Yuuri’s hair. The other stops undoing the buttons of his jacket and pulls back so he can squint up at him.

“You deliberately asked what would ‘excite’ you, you absolute pervert, you knew what I would think.”

Victor’s grin just widens. “Only because I know you can match me in perversion.”

And he takes advantage of the stall, yanking the reigns from Yuuri while he’s caught up in self-righteousness. He threads one hand through Yuuri’s slicked-back hair and pulls, hard, tilting Yuuri’s head back so he can close his teeth over the juncture between neck and shoulder.

Yuuri begins, “Marks-”

Victor bites harder and Yuuri seems to forget what he was saying. He only draws back when Yuuri gives up that distressed little whine he’d been digging for. Victor’s toes curl inside his shoes, and the noise and the salt-taste spike his already hot blood toward boiling. He pries his lips from Yuuri’s skin—slowly, one at a time, dragging the inside of his bottom lip over the bruise he can’t wait to see blossom.

“The collars for tomorrow are high enough. And even if they weren’t, there’re no judges anymore to disapprove.”

Yuuri nods—as best he’s able, with Victor’s hand anchored in his hair. He’s looking blissed out already, eyes soft, blinking slow. Victor settles his other hand into gel-matted strands and steadies him, lips pressed to his, tongue seeking the roof of Yuuri’s mouth and drawing another vulnerable groan from him.

When Victor lets him go, Yuuri wobbles on his feet—past forgetting that he was trying to grind Victor into readiness.

They’re both ready now.

Thinking that Yuuri is going to say something else, make some other pretty, helpless declaration, Victor waits. But he just looks at Victor with wide, searching eyes. Brings one hand against his face, pulling Victor’s lower lip down with his thumb—before he all but spins on his heels and heads further into the room.

Victor follows him. Yuuri is starting to undress himself, so Victor follows suit, struggling with belt and socks and vest until he hears rummages through their bags. The blue and pink and braided cord of tomorrow’s costumes glitter in his vision for a moment, almost distracting him, before he sees that Yuuri is almost naked, and holding out a condom for him. Victor glances at it powerlessly, still trying to get his shirt off around the tie that he has not yet managed to successfully remove. His jaw works.

Seeing that Victor isn’t quite ready, Yuuri sighs and tosses it toward him, onto the comforter—with a minute roll of his eyes—before flopping backward onto the beds they’ve pushed together.

“You do that, and I'll..." he says, as he reaches for himself, lube already slicking his fingers. Victor finally finishes undressing, kneeling to join his lover on the bed. He gets as close to Yuuri as he can without interrupting his ministrations. Pets over his sides and his biceps, shifts heavy pieces of hair from his forehead. Watches the little crease that appears between his eyebrows.

“You don’t want me to-”

“No.”

So Victor does as he’s told, reaches to the foot of the bed and opens the wrapper before rolling the condom over himself. Only then does he cover Yuuri’s body with his own, kisses his jaw, his neck as he waits. Both their movements are eager, restless, even, but it’s probably best like this—Yuuri will know the second he’s ready.

When Victor’s mouth against his neck grows more insistent, Yuuri mumbles, “You’re distracting me.”

“Sorry.”

Victor is not sorry. Or he is, marginally, as soon as Yuuri starts making his favorite noises—those little aborted moans that speak of hunger even shyness cannot mute—and all Victor can do is anticipate, longing to be inside him.

"Okay," Yuuri pulls back, both hands going to Victor's shoulders, legs coming around him as Victor enters him in one long slide that punches a groan out of both of them.

Yuuri’s is, maybe, a little more like a growl.  

They fuck hard and fast, Victor's hand at Yuuri's cock. Yuuri eventually has to unhook his ankles from around Victor so he can grind his feet into the coverlet, stop the momentum from shoving them up the bed. But some ways through, as Victor feels himself plateau, it grows tender. Can't help but do so, between them. Now the force of it is still brutal, but it’s slow, deliberate—enough that Victor starts talking, can't stop the stream that is half filth, half praise.

"God it’s like heaven inside you.” Victor sinks both his hands back into Yuuri hair and grips, bringing their foreheads together. He can hear Yuuri press his own lips together to try to stifle the noises being forced from him, so Victor tightens his hold and breathes. Deliberate. Coaxing. Yuuri’s mouth parts and Victor touches his top lip to Yuuri’s, fucking him slowly, roughly, swallowing every breath. “So open for me, you could barely wait for it could you, barely wait to be filled up, to let me have you. . .”

“ _Ah_ , Victor-”

“You feel amazing. You _are_ amazing. My world record, jesus, just show the entire world, why don’t you, show them that I…”

"That you made me,” Yuuri supplies.

Victor nods, kissing over his cheeks, the bridge of his nose. He still doesn’t let go of his hair, scratching his fingers against Yuuri’s scalp as he crushes their mouths together. “I did. And we’ll keep at it, keep showing them-”

“That you're _mine_ ," Yuuri interrupts, his eyes lustrous, unfocused behind his glasses—which he hadn’t bothered to take off.

And it wasn't what Victor was going to say, but he melts into it, hands gentling. "Yours," he agrees. He presses his lips to Yuuri's chest, underneath his chin, anywhere he can reach. “Yours.”

The word sets off a change in Yuuri's breathing that Victor knows all too well. He rears back, not wanting to miss it.

“Now show me you're mine,” he says, long fingers coaxing Yuuri's face towards his. “Just me, only I get to see you like this, c’mon, show me-“

And the other's voice cracks, he falls apart underneath Victor—who does not let him look away, who holds his gaze even while the hand around Yuuri’s dick moves through the warm release, milking him for all he’s worth.  
  
 ***  
  
As the little group indulges Jean Jacques Leroy in a very loud recount of his band’s latest recording session (from which they had also recovered triumphantly after a few minor setbacks, thank-you-very-much), Yuuri turns into Victors side, his nose cold against the skin under Victor’s ear. It’s a pleasant addition to the smell of smoke around them, reminds him he’s alive, he’s here—and Victor relishes the chill that rolls through him.

Under his breath, Yuuri asks, "So do you think after this, you're gonna want to... You know, again?”

“Yes. For sure yes.”

Victor thinks Yuuri is trying to be subtle, so he doesn’t turn from the crowd. Speaks in a low voice around the half-smile he offers the rest of the skaters. But Yuuri isn’t having it; he grabs Victor’s collar and pulls him in close. Beyond the half-damp tousle that is Yuuri’s hair, Victor can see Chris smirking at them. Yuuri whispers, "I want to. Now. But it would be rude to leave, and I know I'm gonna drink, so..." He draws Victor even closer. "You have my current, sober, full and complete permission to do exactly as you like with me, when we go back to the hotel.”

Victor gives him the eye contact he craves, and a shuddering breath, in answer.

They pub crawl down one of the main downtown streets: the group of skaters, the significant others, Minako. And Mari, for that matter. The other coaches have dispersed, saving their strength for the banquet tomorrow night. The point is, he knows each and every one of them, trusts all of them—possibly with the exception of the Canadian woman who looks ready to fight to the death for her fiancé’s honor. But Victor still doesn’t let any of them buy Yuuri a drink. Nor any of the skater otaku that pop up from under tables and out of taps for all he knows, at every bar they land in. He doesn’t let the strings of Christmas lights or the bars’ soft illumination turn anyone’s mind to generosity and carelessness—except his own. He keeps everything on his own tab; and it’s part protection, part possessiveness.

Celebration this may be, but Victor still doesn't want to let Yuuri get sloppy drunk. Multiple sources of booze—or loneliness, but that isn’t a problem tonight—is how that happens, after all.

Victor himself sticks to a couple shots of vodka—each one of them Chris’ doing, of course—and so he does lose track of exactly how many glasses of chardonnay Yuuri has. All he knows is that his fiancé grows ever more garrulous, ever more pleased with himself and with everyone else. All he knows is that even without the over-the-top shenanigans, this is the same man he fell head over heels with at the banquet last year. The same man who pointed to him on the ice, hours ago, not staking his claim but skating it, in front of the entire world. The same man he’s going to spend the rest of his life watching over, if Yuuri will let him.  
  
***  
  
Normally they’d make their way on foot back to the hotel, Barcelona is such a walkable city. But they stumble—or Yuuri stumbles; Victor is (mostly) sober and holds his partner around the waist—out the doors of the pub, and Victor thinks he’d better hail a taxi instead. He hears someone whoop after them as they go. Phichit, probably, because Yuuri swivels in Victor’s arms like a top, the fabric of his dress shirt slithery, and sends what can only be described as a very loud smile back toward the crowd in the smoky, low-lit interior.

But Yuuri is, perhaps, not as gone as he’s made himself out to be.

He’s quiet as they wait on the cobblestone outside. Watches the paired white clouds rising as they breathe the late night, in and out. Then he looks at Victor directly, with an expression that says he has not forgotten what he said to Victor when their group sat down at the first bar. His eyes are dark amber, shining, pupils retracting but never straying from Victor even as a taxi comes with blaring headlights around the corner. Even as Victor opens the door for him and lets him slide in first.

“You sure you can handle even one more year of this kind of partying?” he asks, his hand awfully high up Victor’s leg as they pile into the cab.

But Victor has never once backed down from Yuuri’s prompting. “Careful. Are you sure you can handle an exhibition skate at 2 o’clock tomorrow afternoon if I don’t let you sleep tonight?”

Victor does not expect Yuuri to smile like a demon and curl himself closer, but that’s just what he does. “I’ve skated on less.”

“Less than no sleep?” Victor chuckles, gripping Yuuri’s hand and pulling it off his thigh and around his shoulder. After all, this is a cabbie, not a hotel driver; this is not someone paid _not_ to go to the press.

Yuuri just gives a grunt and headbutts Victor’s shoulder. “You know what I mean. Do your worst, Coach.”

And Yuuri _never_ calls him that—Victor’s mouth goes dry, and he’s not sure it’s wet enough for him to speak even minutes later, as he’s leaning down in the lobby of the hotel room and making himself drink from the ice-cold fountain. Yuuri is several steps beyond him, pressing the “Up” button on the elevator in an brusque tattoo.

“Victor!” he all but shouts, probably not seeing that Victor has ducked into the alcove. “This one’s coming down!”

“Yuuri, shhh,” Victor chides, knowing it will do no good as he comes around the corner to meet him.

It doesn’t—because Yuuri pushes Victor against the bar of the elevator the second the doors snick shut, certainly not caring for any security cameras that might happen to be installed here. Shoves his thigh directly between Victor’s and makes him gasp. He’s slipped a couple fingers beneath Victor’s tie and has popped the top two buttons of his dress shirt before Victor has adjusted to the pressure.

“Yuuri…”

“Hmm?” the younger man says. The syllable vibrates against his sternum, where Yuuri has pulled the shirt aside and is nosing his way in.

“When you’re drunk you get very. . . top-y.”

Yuuri blinks like he doesn’t understand the word—and then his ears turn red. Redder than the rest of his face, anyway.

“Oh-” He pulls back a little, fiddling with the last button he undid. “Sorry.”

Yuuri does not look sorry.

And Victor doesn’t want him to be.

Victor’s smile feels knife sharp. He’s glad their little room upstairs is that much closer.

They manage the rest of the way, from the elevator and down the hall. When the faux-gold numbers flash in his eyes and announce they’re in the right place, he steers Yuuri toward their door, one hand on each of his shoulderblades. He cages Yuuri in, palms pressed to the door on either side of Yuuri’s head as the younger man fiddles with their key card.

Into the back of his neck, Victor murmurs, “You know, last year, after the banquet. Even that night I wanted you. I would’ve taken you home.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Yuuri doesn’t even stop to swallow nervously; he just reinserts the keycard after the little light goes amber instead of green. Victor is impressed. He grins into Yuuri’s collar, a little sweat-damp and smelling vaguely of his cologne. They hadn’t had time, between fucking and changing, to wash thoroughly, so they had barely managed a rinse and an application of scent.

“Celestino was giving me the ‘If you make a move on my sweet summer child I will murder you in cold blood’ vibe.”

“How very Game of Thrones of him,” Yuuri deadpans, just as the door flies open ahead of them. They trip over one another, tumbling inside, before Victor catches himself against Yuuri’s back and pivots to close the door, both hands against it as he hears and feels the buzz of the automatic mechanism locking them safely inside.

“I think he underestimated y-”

Yuuri now cages _him_ against the door, pressing his front all along Victor’s spine, his breath hot against the back of Victor’s neck.

“Yeah, I think maybe he did.”

Snaking one arm around Victor, he untucks the dress shirt from his slacks and prods his fingers under the waistband. Victor releases a sound he knows he should be embarrassed by—but he literally could not care less, as Yuuri’s fingers find the base of his dick. He squirms; and Yuuri presses him higher against the door. Victor lets out a soft cry that he intends to sound put out, but instead sounds needy.

The door is cool against his forehead, as Yuuri wraps his fingers one at a time around his cock and starts to stroke him to full hardness. He presses his cheek against the door so he can glance behind him and see Yuuri—but the other has the crown of his head jammed tight against Victor’s back.

“Victor…”

He lets himself sound exactly as wrecked as he feels when he answers. “Yuuri… move us to the bed?”

They make their way there, after Yuuri spins Victor around and jams their lips together. His groan vibrates between them, and Victor smiles at the twin sensation of the noise and the side of the bed hitting the backs of his knees. He has to help Yuuri down to the mattress after he makes his way there; Yuuri looks a little lost, standing over him, hands grasping like he’s not entirely sure what to do with them. So Victor pulls him down on top of himself, parting his legs—which are still clad in fabric, _shoot_. But their delicious progression from earlier resumes, Yuuri’s hands snaking in around his sides where his button-down has fallen away.

Breathless, Yuuri asks, “What do you want to…”

Victor is resolute. He takes in the popcorn ceiling and Yuuri’s over-bright amber eyes and says, “I want to do what you want to do.”

“I want to… you know.”

Through the fire in his expression, Yuuri manages shyness; he chews his lips between his teeth and even though he’s kneeling over Victor on the bed, manages to looks up at Victor through his eyelashes. And there’s such a different atmosphere between them tonight, so much like that first night they danced together, when Yuuri had first told him exactly what he wanted of him.

Victor’s mouth goes dry, again.

“I get the feeling you want everything”—Yuuri’s response is all enthusiasm, breathing out and nodding warmly at Victor’s words—“but for the moment, can you be more specific?”

Yuuri starts speaking, but it’s so soft it might be in Japanese; Victor’s not sure. All he catches is: “…to you.”

Now it only takes a second for Victor to understand what Yuuri wants.

“Oh! That- I don’t have a preference, all you had to do was ask.”

“Preference, huh. Even if I end up preferring the way we normally do it-”

Victor offers what he knows is a mean smile. “Oho, really?”

“-I won’t know unless I try.” Now Yuuri regains some of the easiness. “And I’m feeling adventurous.”

Victor licks at the corner of his own mouth. “Adventurous. Which means?”

Yuuri surprises him by leaning down and chasing Victor’s tongue with his own, not pulling back until there is spit running toward both their chins.

And to say that Katsuki Yuuri becomes something of a wild animal when he’s wasted is a vast understatement. His tongue held between his teeth, peeking out between reddened lips, he undresses them both with efficiency. Purpose. Kisses like he’ll die without the fulfillment, without Victor’s tongue in his mouth. Without his hands pressing Victor down to the bed. Apparently the normally straight-laced Japanese boy, ever-polite, ever contained but for the occasional irascibility, becomes a creature of pure appetite when he has the benefit of lowered inhibitions.

Like a starving man, he makes his way down Victor’s body, catching lips and tongue and teeth at every opportune spot he can find. And he’s relentless about it. Even after biting his way over Victor’s chest, as Yuuri’s tongue dives into his navel, his hands are suddenly at Victor’s nipples, middle fingers pressing down and causing Victor to arch up off the bed, compelling his hands to wind their way around the back of Yuuri’s neck.

Yuuri keeps going. He noses along the v of Victor’s hips, hard with muscle from their recent practice—and all that lifting. Licks his way up his aching cock—for just a moment, just enough to close his lips over the head and set every single muscle in Victor’s core jerking, tightening—before he makes his way off and lower, still. Victor’s almost going to tell him to stop. But when his tongue traces back over his perineum, Victor just lets out a word—something that is almost “ _god_ ”—and lets his head and his hands fall back against the sheets.

It’s been a long time since anyone has done this for him—and Victor has never done this for Yuuri. Again, he would if Yuuri asked, but he never had. Had never really indicated any interest. Though he seems to like it well enough when Victor uses his fingers, until this second, Victor wasn’t even sure his formerly virginal partner had been aware of such practices.

 But he’s certainly aware now, using both hands to force Victor’s thighs against his stomach; the movement gives him access, and he drags his tongue over the sensitive skin of Victor’s entrance. Enough to set Victor jumping a little with just how thorough he’s able to be. He gasps and tosses his head when Yuuri uses the strength of that muscle to thrust his way inside. Just a little. Just enough. But Yuuri himself has been on this side of things enough to know that just that shallow prying, that bit of depth isn’t going to do much. So he breathes harshly through his nose, offers one long, wet stripe over the delicate skin there. Then he sets his cheek against the jut of Victor’s hip.

“Are you okay with that?” Yuuri asks.

Victor just blinks at him, sure his face is stupid with pleasure.

Yuuri’s smile—his mouth all damp, and a little swollen—is dangerous. “With the adventurous thing.”

Victor nods. But it’s all broken, stuttering, goes on a little too long. Somewhere past the haze of pleasure and drink, he’s sure it must be the most shell-shocked gesture he’s ever managed.

But he does pull himself together enough to help guide Yuuri for the next part. Shows him how many fingers he needs, and just what angle will drive Victor absolutely crazy. Even helps Yuuri roll on a condom when the younger man’s bravado runs out and his hands are shaking too badly.

Once Yuuri has him flat against the mattress, though, he gazes at him with all the love in the world while he waits for Victor to release the breath he’s holding and relax.

“You’re okay?” Yuuri asks.

Victor nods, his eyes half-lidded. “More than okay.”

They’re both smiling a little as Yuuri makes his way inside. Victor doesn’t expect him to be able to keep the expression up—and he doesn’t, it melts into an open-mouthed gasp; he doesn’t expect it to go smooth—which it doesn’t, it’s a little too fast in some places and a little too slow in others. But it’s perfect nonetheless. Victor watches Yuuri breathe, while he waits for them both to adjust, watches him turn his head toward the single light on the bedside table. One droplet of sweat makes its way down Yuuri’s temple, and Victor leans up to catch it with his tongue.

After he pulls back, Victor drags his heel down the back of his partner’s thigh. “Move, Yuuri.”

And he does. It’s a little unsure: a little like he’s still shy about it, a lot like he’s afraid of either hurting Victor or completely losing it before they’ve even gotten started. Victor feels him holding back and wants to draw it all out of him more than he wants anything in this world.

On that pleasure-soaked whim, Victor asks, “Do you remember grinding against me at the banquet last year?”

Yuuri just shakes his head, breathing hard. Too focused for his flush to intensify.

“God, I do, I’ll never forget, you rolled your hips against me like some kind of high-class courtesan—who knew you could move even better than that.”

“Sh-shut up, you can’t— _uhh_ —hold that against me, I don’t remember doing it-”

“Oh I don’t hold it against you at all.”

“But you’re making fun of it.”

“I am _definitely_ not making fun.” He grasps at the back of Yuuri’s head, scratches his nails through the short hair at the back of his neck. “I’m saying I was surprised by how you moved back then. I liked it. And if you paid attention when I complimented you, instead of dismissing it, you’d notice that I’m saying that now…”

Victor trails off as Yuuri picks up his rhythm. Victor sighs into it, letting his head tip back. Into the new but entirely delectable sensation of Yuuri inside him. One of Yuuri’s hands—the one that he’s not using desperately to anchor himself up from the mattress—trailing over his side, over his chest, up his neck, thumb sliding over the side of his face and blunt fingernails setting pressure into the back of his neck. It was perfect before; and now it’s the universe at Victor’s feet, a steady, star-bright pressure against his most sensitive core.

Yuuri, of course, is too curious to stay quiet, and Victor doesn’t blame him when he digs his fingertips in a little, stirring Victor back to the sweat and friction of the present moment. On an exhale, Yuuri prompts, “Now…? What are you saying now?”

Victor feels his smile happen, more than intends it to happen. Can feel that it’s his dangerous smile.

“Now?” He looks Yuuri in the face when he says, “I like the way you fuck.”

Victor drinks in the shocked gasp—they usually don’t use words like that with one another so it’s not an unexpected reaction.

As always, Victor is impressed by Yuuri’s stamina. But the strangeness of the switch—he knows, himself—is still overwhelming. Victor doesn’t blame him when at some point Yuuri gets a little incoherent. When he slows down, might be muttering something; he grabs Victor’s hand, his right hand, finds his ring and pinches it between his fingers, twists it a little. Then he really takes off: moving his hips steadily and speaking, and Victor is both perplexed and delighted, being the one who typically fills their bed with words.

But it’s all in Japanese, and Victor says:

“Baby I love that you’re talking, believe me, but I’m only getting every other word so. If you want me to understand you you’re-”

Here he gasps when Yuuri leans down, tightens his grip around the backs of both Victor’s forearms, and hauls him bodily upward so that they’re face to face, Victor straddling him. The rest is a rush of breath and soft syllables. 

“. . .going to need to switch to English.”

Yuuri tries. But the only words he seems to be able to remember in that language are, “I love you so much.”

And Victor grinds down against Yuuri’s upward movements, still thinking that it's precious that the only time Yuuri can actually express himself without veiling his meaning in metaphor ( _really, a ring is not a thank-you gift, Yuuri, your competitors saw through you even if the sportscasters didn’t—“pair ring” indeed_ ) is when he’s gone on satisfaction—whether food or drink or Victor himself.  
  
***

Victor is on his side, trailing his fingers down Yuuri's back, when he asks him, "So how did that feel?"

"Amazing."

Victor laughs. "Naturally, but I mean, was it different? How did it feel being in control?"

"Well..." After a beat, Yuuri looks up from where he rests, face-down on his stomach, so that he’s squinting into the half-darkness of the hotel room as if it has the answer. "It didn't feel like being in control. And I usually set the pace when I'm riding you, anyway."

Yuuri must still be a little drunk, because he doesn't even blush as he says this. Victor, however, does—he's more flustered about that fact than about his next question, which sounds uncharacteristically shy in his own ears. "If not control, what did it feel like?”

"Like..."

Yuuri's eyes, still a little glazed over with the drinks from earlier, are narrowed in thought for a long moment. Almost long enough that the next cycle of expressions is too quick for Victor to catch it. An absent smile, one that melts off his face like ice over a candle, and his eyes widen before he flails behind himself and pulls, hiding under his pillow.

"...Yuuri?"

"I can't tell you, it's embarrassing."

It comes out all muffled, and it's just funny enough for Victor to say, "More embarrassing than comparing your sexual persona to katsudon?"

Yuuri peeks out from under the fluffy bedding long enough to glare at Victor, before heaving it off himself, sitting up forcefully and sighing. "Fine," he says, in the over-dramatic way of people who don't actually mind what they're doing all that much. Then he flops to the side, head falling onto Victor's stomach. He turns onto his back, settling, and Victor starts running his hands through Yuuri's hair, pushing his bangs back from his face. How he has such intense sex hair when he wasn’t even the one on his back is beyond Victor—not a problem, of course, he thinks it’s adorable.

"So you remember how I asked if you minded going to a specific spot where we could exchange rings?"

"Of course."

Victor listens, all the while relishing the way Yuuri's hair still feels soft despite the sweat causing tendrils of it to stick to his forehead. Yuuri grabs one of Victor’s hands, and winds their fingers together.

"And I picked a church for... Well. Obvious reasons?"

"A cathedral. You were a little grander than all that, but yes."

Yuuri just makes a little face at being corrected, still staring at their hands where they're linked together. He takes Victor's in both of his own, seeming to examine his palms, stroking his fingertips over Victor’s knuckles.

"Well it felt like that," he finally says. "It felt like worship."

Victor, at a complete loss for words, has only one thought: this boy will be the death of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why am I incapable of writing smut without sap? Please help, friends, these two have killed me and brought me back to life me every week… what we we gonna do now that it’s over…
> 
> The image music - I just love the interplay between the piano and violin here—what dominates during the various phrases. And the second movement is all frantic and glorious. I’m a classical music nerd pardon me.
> 
> Comments and constructive criticism are much appreciated!


	3. Always

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday, Vitya.
> 
> Image Music: Rachmaninoff, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43: [Variation 18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E7XHOotTX0).

By the time Yuuri understands that he’s no longer dreaming—mired in frenetic movement, chipping ice—he’s already alone in the bed, tracking by the shifting heat that Victor is standing above him, kissing his hair. And that the bedside lamp is on. And that it is very bright.

But there is no light coming in between the hotel curtains. Yuuri breathes in hard through his nose, scrunches his eyes closed. “‘time is it,” he asks, not sure if his accent is decipherable.

Victor hums under his breath, his voice growing soft with distance. “A little after 2:30.”

Yuuri groans and sits up, both hands covering his face. His head swims. They’ve barely had a post-coital nap. “Is this actually why you said I was going to be sorry, earlier? Because you’re never going to leave me alone again?”

Victor laughs from where he’s digging around in the mini fridge. “Very funny. But you knew that already.”

“Did I?”

Yuuri takes in the carpeted footsteps, drawing closer. “Here, drink this,” Victor says, pressing something almost-frozen to Yuuri’s forearm. Yuuri jumps at the temperature, then removes his hands from his face. A bottle of water.

He grabs for it, not noticing until that moment how thirsty he is. The first few drains are voracious, instinctual. After a moment, he’s relishing in the cold liquid sliding down his throat, taking in the dip of Victor sitting on the mattress next to him, the bright red of the bedside lamp beyond his eyelids. He has two thoughts: one, Phichit is the actual best to which the rest of the world’s best friends aspire, for asking Victor to make sure Yuuri drinks water after their celebrations. And two, Yuuri is absolutely filthy. There’s dried gel in his hair, crusted down his hairline, and sweat caked into every crease of his skin, and god knows what dried along his stomach and the inside of his thighs—and Victor takes the words out of his mouth, suggesting separate showers so they can do the job right.

Victor’s tone turns teasing as he concludes, “And you’d better go first because I don’t trust you not to go back to sleep.”

Yuuri smiles a little dryly, lets Victor pull him out from beneath the pile of blankets, and he stumbles alone to the washroom. With its beautiful shower with the black and green tile, and the shining veins all through it that are definitely fake gold but still lovely, nonetheless. Eye-catching, as he massages the scent of unfamiliar shampoo into his hair and the curious texture of hotel soap over his skin. He’s more thorough than he normally would be, for a hotel night spent just to pass the hours between flights. The spray, the unfamiliar water pressure is waking him up, and his stomach grumbles—he wonders if Victor would be up for room service.

And then the frosted glass of the shower door swings open.

Yuuri squeaks—no, it’s not a manly or attractive sound. He marks on Victor’s naked form and says, ready at the defense, ”H-hey, you said separate..."

Victor draws the door closed behind him. "And you had one,” he says, in a surprisingly neutral voice.

"What about-"

"I won't need one ’til after."

"After."

Victor nods. "I wanted to give you enough time to clean up—and then I wanted to do this."

And his face doesn’t even change as he sets his fingertips lightly against Yuuri’s chest, before dragging down with gentle force. Causing Yuuri’s eyes to go wide, his breath to slow, to stop. It’s a leisurely pull of skin on skin, turning into a scratch just this side of too much, sliding along his core. Then Victor sinks down to his knees so he can trail his fingers lower, all the way down to his mid-thighs and then right back up to the very cradle of his hips. Part of him, a troublesome, traitorous part, is becoming more interested by the second.

"Where-" Yuuri chokes off his gasp when Victor drives all ten fingers in and kneads his way up his thighs again. Now he's half hard already. "Where did you learn to do that?"

Victor shrugs. "Simple blood flow."

"Witchcraft," Yuuri insists, shaking his head and setting his palm lightly against the back of Victor's head as the other man leans in to kiss both sharp hipbones. His chin lightly, _barely_ grazes Yuuri’s cock as he does it. Yuuri can feel his smile when he punctuates that second kiss to his hip with a short, sharp suck that just might leave a bruise.

“You surprised everyone today. Overwhelmed me. Let me do the same for you. Let me overwhelm you, Yuuri.”

And he says it in that low, smoky tone that had once been a tease and was now a promise. Still, habit and pride make Yuuri put up a little fight. He mutters, “You already did. Twice.”

Only now does Victor get that look on his face that tells Yuuri the shower will be completely counter-productive.

Despite the wolfish grin, Victor takes his goddamn sweet time about it, mouthing at the tops of his thighs and the v of his hips. Yuuri minds less than he might otherwise, being still tipsy and sleep-hazy. He worries absently, about Victor slipping, or himself sliding right off the wall, injuring either himself of Victor—kneeing him in the face probably won’t win him any points. Worries-- but only until Victor noses his way into the dark hair at the base of his cock.

Victor hikes one of Yuuri's legs up, just then—showing him what he wants, sending both Yuuri’s palms against the slick tiles. He thanks god absently that he has a figure skater’s balance.

“Put it over my shoulder—yes, just like that.”

This isn’t the first time Victor has used his mouth, but it’s still new, still makes him feel vulnerable and completely exposed. The first, Yuuri had been so unexpecting, so unused to the damp pressure and slide that Victor had had to hold his hips down with the force of his entire forearm to keep him in place. Now, Yuuri is ready, watching Victor as he kisses at the insides of his thighs again, closes his teeth over the tendon just at his groin and—instead of biting, instead of sucking, he teases, grazes his teeth lightly, and Yuuri reaches up to cover his mouth with his hand, on impulse.

Using the hand that’s not clasping at Yuuri’s thigh over his shoulder, Victor tugs at his elbow.

“None of that. Let me hear you.”

And Yuuri does, his hands reaching on impulse for Victor’s hair again, sliding into it lightly while Victor slides his lips along his erection. When he pulls back and engulfs Yuuri in slick heat, his tongue pressing perfectly upward, Yuuri tries and fails not to tug harder at those silver strands.

Sex was far from his mind, when he’d stepped in the shower. Even when Victor had joined him; he’d felt too tired, too sated. But when Victor sinks one finger inside him, up to the knuckle without any warning, and there’s more drag than normal—water is hardly a lubricant—the shock of it is _nice_ , it’s hot, all friction, overwhelming as the heat of Victor’s mouth around him. Victor manages up to two digits, Yuuri squirming and shoving his shoulders into the tile behind him, trying with everything he’s worth not to yank the hair in his hands. He starts feeling the need for more, but they probably can’t manage that without leaving the bathroom to find the supplies they left on the bed. The bottle he probably clicked closed after using it to open Victor up. Probably. He hopes, or else he’s making a middle of the night run to a Barcelona drug store.

Through his mind shoots the image, the feeling of being balls deep inside the man under him—Victor underneath him, all silver and white, that expanse of pale skin. Now contrasting dramatic, arresting, with the the washroom tiles, the darkness and shine of the marble.

“You’re so beautiful,” Yuuri says—rolling his hips as much as Victor’s hands will allow, completely unable to stop himself. _Unwilling_ to stop himself, in word or in deed, even if he’d had the ability. “Victor, do you even know how gorgeous you are? God you’re so beautiful, so pretty, I love having you here so much, I can’t stop watching you-”

And Victor doesn’t seem to mind this. Victor, who sends one hand to the back of Yuuri’s own hand anchored in his hair, helps guide the grip until it traps him with intimacy, with devotion, even, into the cradle of Yuuri’s hips. Victor’s tongue is literal perfection, drawing up toward the head of his dick and encircling until Yuuri can barely tell which way is up. It isn’t taking long—the bob of Victor’s head says that he doesn’t want it to be long—and when Victor finishes him, he swallows him down. He doesn’t even hesitate; he could easily pull away and spit into the drain—but he doesn’t, he literally drains Yuuri dry, one hand clutched at his hip and one hand clutched over Yuuri’s wrist, over the hand still buried in Victor’s hair.

Breathing is all Yuuri can do, for a moment—then tilt his head against the hard wall, scritch his hand through the short hair of Victor’s undercut and relish in the puff of breath over his inner thigh, where Victor is smoothing his face over his heated skin. They gasp together, taking pleasure in empathy, the way the other feels in that moment. Victor drinking in, digesting Yuuri’s satisfaction. Yuuri trying to navigate the electric zing of control, the thrill of anticipation in Victor’s every breath.

Yuuri almost misses it. Is so enamored of the afterglow that he’s distracted as Victor plucks a washcloth from god knows where and helps him clean up. Asks Yuuri to finish cleaning up every crease and crevice, does the same for himself. Yuuri thinks briefly on the way Victor had once sidestepped from the nosebleed he’d gotten at the Southern Regional Championship back at home. But there’s none of the urgency, none of the quick dart away from bodily fluid, now. Even as Victor returns to stand under the spray—uses the last of the hot water to thoroughly rinse his hands, the inside of his mouth.

It doesn’t feel like a side-step, now. It feels like consideration.

The older man carries Yuuri, then. He’s lifted him up plenty of times in practice—but now he full on bridal carries him. It’s so short, and Yuuri can tell he struggles a bit, such that its doesn’t feel like that smooth grip you imagine when you say it—bridal carry—but Victor does manage them all the way from the shower to the bed. There, he lays Yuuri on his front, stomach against the sheets, letting him go boneless, thumbs kneading the tight muscles of his traps, and then kissing and biting his way down his back.

His teeth and the soft places of his mouth settle just above Yuuri’s hips. He slips his tongue lower, pressing firm at the skin just above his rim, dragging it up his spine afterward and setting Yuuri’s head thrash against the sheet.

Victor is taking him apart. But slowly—and Yuuri has to blink away tears as he turns his head and vaguely asks,

“Yesterday, you said you wanted to make- uh. Mm.”

But he can’t say it. He tries, but it gets trapped behind his teeth. Victor rests his chin against the small of Yuuri’s back, with a long sigh. He’s barely in Yuuri’s peripheral vision but Yuuri thinks he’s got that indulgent smile on his face when he says, “Make you scream?”

Yuuri blinks, keeps his eyes closed on the second blink. “Yeah.”

“Do still want me to, pet?”

Yuuri nods, all enthusiasm, all acceptance.

Victor bites the skin just above his hip, distracting him as he reaches for the lube shoved under the pillow. Yuuri is fairly relaxed already, from their shower escapades, so his lover’s fingers fit easily, one, two, the stretch of it increasing all the way up to four—Yuuri can literally feel every joint of the fourth finger slide in. Feels it intricately when they all slide away, too. Then he hears the metallic crinkle of the condom wrapper. And he reaches back for Victor’s, hand clasping over his arm. “I wish you wouldn’t.”

Victor gives a short gasp—but it turns into a moan, one that Victor sets into Yuuri’s shoulder. “Yuuri~, we have to save _something_ for our wedding night.”

That sends a warm pulse through Yuuri. But he says, “You’re creative, you’ll think of something else.”

It might sound like a taunt, but the crux of it is heartfelt: he doesn’t want anything between himself and Victor right now. And Victor is so kind, so accommodating, he continues to give every part of himself to Yuuri. Continues to overwhelm him, pressure against his back. Fills him up, that way, too, kneeing his way between Yuuri’s thighs and pressing his cock against his entrance until it twitches, relaxes, lets him in. Deep, familiar, but the furthest thing from accustomed Yuuri can think of.

“Arch your back,” Victor says, his voice grating over its own intensity.

Yuuri shifts his hips, sending his spine into a deeper arch. He knows exactly what each minute touch of Victor’s hands means, at this point. Feels just the slightest force at his side, along his thigh. Understands that he’s got it right, when Victor murmurs what Yuuri is almost positive means “good boy” in Russian. Or at least, something to that effect; he’d thought he’d heard him call Yurio something like it in a patronizing tone when the teen had been in Hasetsu—

But the tone of it is not patronizing now. It’s all heat. All gratitude. The shift allows him to get his hands under Yuuri’s hips, gripping around where his thighs meet his groin, pull him backward with more leverage and sending Victor’s cock grazing perfectly against his whole front wall, a steady tension against his prostate. Yuuri rocks his own weight back, leveraging against his knees dug into the mattress.

Victor lifts one hand from his hip, grazes it from the small of his back, trailing muscle all the way to his wrist, fingernails parting the sweat. The older man stays flush against him for a long moment, grasping his hand, pressing kisses into the back of his neck. When he lifts himself up, his hair tickles between Yuuri’s shoulder blades.

It’s all too seductive.

Yuuri feels himself cry out as Victor sits back up, tightening his hold and thrusting home with renewed force. The sensation, the day’s adrenaline, the hour, all of it makes him minutely sensitive to Victor’s breath hitting the damp of his sweat, the dig of each digit where Victor holds him.

Victor grunts with incoherence. “I should’ve come with you in the shower, this- ah, isn’t gonna be long.”

“ ’S okay,” Yuuri says. For all his accommodation, he’s not sure how much more sensation he can take, anyway. There are already tears running down the side of his face and pooling on the Egyptian cotton under his cheek. He endures this, the wave-like thrusting, the intoxicating drag, the trickle of Victor’s hair along the middle of his back—until he has to say it:

“Victor, let me turn around.”

It takes a couple stuttered breaths, but Victor asks, a little alarm, a little impatience—“Is this not good?”

“No, it’s perfect-” and it is, somehow, the stretch, the pressure inside and his cock trapped between the sheets and his stomach _will_ be just enough, he won’t even need to touch himself, but- “it’s incredible, actually, but I want to- hnnn, please, I want to kiss you.”

A barely coherent grunt. “Are you sure, I’m not going to last-”

“Please, _please_ , Victor.”

And it’s full on begging at this point; the second “please” is just air and impatience. Yuuri hears himself, feels how his tears run freer. He doesn’t care. Appreciates, now, in retrospect, the extra depth of emotion that caused Victor to cry harder a couple nights before, when all he’d wanted was for Yuuri to stay that much closer.

He would tear the world apart, right now, if it meant having Victor closer.

So he cries with gratitude again, when Victor does as Yuri asks. When he pulls out, shoves at Yuuri’s shoulders; Yuuri’s spine goes flat along the mattress, and Victor thrusts his way back inside. The strange catch, the velvet texture reminds Yuuri that they’re not using a barrier, and just that knowledge is almost enough to make him come—until Victor is pressing the breath out of him, fitting flush against his hips, up to the hilt, and jamming their lips together, moaning without filter into his mouth. The desperation in the sound Victor makes distracts Yuuri from his own gratification, reminds him of his partner’s. And he wants to reassure him so much; it’s easy for Yuuri to take his hands from where they flail uselessly against the sheets to slide around Victor’s back, easy to draw them up against Victor’s jaw and press down, guide his teeth apart, easy to slide his tongue sinuously into Victors mouth and luxuriate in the heat and the tremor of Victor above him.

He is so gone—residual buzz, sleep, and absolute, exquisite pleasure making his mouth loose and careless, like it had been in the shower. Trails his fingers over Victor’s neck, his shoulder blades, his sides, and a few fingers underneath, to the place where they are joined, all slick with sweat and precum, and he says, “I feel like we were made to do this…”

Victor actually shuts him up. Quiets him with his lips—usually it’s Yuuri who does that, who has to literally make Victor stop talking lest his bright red of his cheeks blind the other man. Victor licking his way inside Yuuri’s mouth, and Yuuri is wet and open from head to toe, shaking, and he starts to lead Victor over the precipice; abrupt, sharp, swallowing each other’s shouted joy.

At the end of the severest shock, Victor still manages to pull back. Yuuri flips his head to the side, presses it into the blanket, riding it out—but Victor takes Yuuri’s chin in one hand, draws him upward until he’s looking Victor in the eyes. Tears and all, and he finishes coming with his lover’s eyes trailing the authentic progression of his face—what he can’t hide, as the sensation goes from not enough, to just right, to too much.

Yuuri shuts his eyes against the rest of it. Even against Victor pulling out and coming—finally, spurting warm and surprisingly long against his upper thigh, against the twitching muscles of his stomach.

Laying there, Yuuri feels used in the best way possible. He wants to cradle Victor in his arms, against the rest of the world, wants to hold his every uncertainty, grasp it to himself and not give it back to him until he’s molded it to a decipherable shape.

He thinks, someday, he’ll be able to do just that.

As they settle into the bed—the two beds, that they have pushed together—they curl around one another. Victor always smells good; but after bathing, he smells like _home_ , like winding down after a long day. Yuuri breathes him in and lightly runs his fingers through Victor’s hair, soft and slithery and still a little damp.

There’s no more tension in either of them, muscle and bone giving way to soft angles. And Yuuri is not surprised when Victor mumbles against the top of his head.

“I hate making you cry.”

Yuuri feels his stomach twitch with what tries to be a laugh. But everything is sore and his voice is too hoarse to do anything but crackle. “Well. It happens. Or so I’ve read.”

“You’ve _read_ , have you?”

Victor’s face is still pressed against the top of his head, so he can’t see Yuuri’s glare. Or his blush. “When you don’t have a frame of reference you get information where you can. Um… Actually.”

Now he sits up. Victor remains curled up against his side. Yuuri gazes down at him, examines his features, the delicate eyebrows, the thoroughly _pretty_ sweep of his eyelashes. He knows it all so well now he doesn’t even need his glasses to see it. Victor is in his head, has been since he was twelve years old, his image imprinted in the even behind Yuuri’s eyelids. But now he knows the feel of those features, can reach out and touch his face with fondness, with reverence. Victor closes his eyes and leans into it.

“I know we basically hashed it out already, but I do want to apologize for… how I handled it when you did. You know, cried. I shouldn’t have- that is, it was pretty insensitive, telling you I was surprised like that. Especially because you always have to deal with me when I get like that.”

Victor smiles, indulgent, lazy. “It’s all forgiven, love.”

Yuuri shifts his grip to the back of his partner’s head, leaning down to touch their foreheads together. “Why are you so good to me?”

And Victor threads the fingers of his right hand through the fingers of Yuuri’s, catching on his ring with clear purpose. These rings are gonna be the death of him, Yuuri thinks, especially when Victor answers him, saying:

“Because you’ve given me everything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, the music for this chapter is the most dramatic, super duper romantic nonsense. A lot of swooping phrases. Moving to a climax you thought couldn't get bigger but somehow ends up absolutely grandiose. Then trailing off. A lesser familiar rendition of the melody, then, something quiet and yearning. I think this couple is one of the only ones I would pair this music with, they make my heart feel that big.
> 
> Basically, not holding anything back. ~~even the porn, was it too much, friends?~~
> 
> I have a couple scenes more planned for this series, one of which takes place in the timeline of this story but doesn’t really fit with… well, all the smut. So I’ll be posting that and possibly a couple more one shots here and there.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! Comments, kudos, feedback, and constructive feedback—here or at my [tumblr](http://utlaginn.tumblr.com/)—are more than welcome.


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